User talk:Jamesndawson

ALAN: As you can see, I'm probably very confused. My internet skills are very poor, as I'm mostly an old snail-mailer.

I have taken a look around, or tried to, and I barely know what's going on. I looked for various "talk pages", but couldn't seem to find any. If there's no "discussion" forum, then why's there a little box that says "discussion" up at the top that brings me to the box I'm now typing in???

A few die-hard old zinesters don't have websites or whatever to refer to---Fred Woodworth being a major example---and old time zining just automatically involved the risk of outdated physical addresses. But I'm glad physical addresses aren't deliberately being avoided. Maybe I'll try write some entries for a few zines I think are very worthwhile written by complete non-internetters.

Anyway, I just wanted to see what ZineWiki was all about. I have some proficiency on several other discussion boards, so I know a little about using them, but this one may take me a while to figure out. Don't try to explain it to me. I'll just tinker with it now and then, and try to learn by doing.

Thanks for the reply. Good luck with your project.

James

Have Stories, Publisher Wanted

I have been sent a number of stories by an elderly man, probably in his eighties, with the pen name of “R.D. Scull”. He answered one of my “Big Mail” ads and sent me some.

I am looking for zine or small press publishers, probably in the literary genre. But it would be important to find a publication that this gentleman would be pleased to be in. Something acceptable to his generational culture and standards. It wouldn’t have to be stuffy or anything, just something that isn’t filled with Satanic death metal, hardcore porn, etc. Something, for example, with the standards of FATE magazine.

I have already typeset and published two of his stories in my own JUNK ZINE, but I’m only doing a 60-copy print run with this, and I’d like to see him printed in something larger. "The Flute" has been typeset and is a little less than 4 pages long.

His stories are somewhat rough, but I found that they have a sweetness and poignancy to them I think a lot of people would enjoy. I have typeset one on Word from xeroxes of his manuscripts, which are typewritten, double-spaced in all caps. So I can send it electronically. Both margins in his xeroxes are slightly cut off, and I had to guess at a few garbled words, so my typesetting on Word was a difficult process (no complaint or criticism intended).

Not meaning to be demanding, I would only like to have these printed pretty much “as is”. I don’t think they should be reworked. This is “folk literature” and the personality of R.D. with his idiosyncracies of usage and grammar should be allowed to come through exactly as it is. It would lose it’s charm otherwise. I’ve done some minimal editing to iron out enough rough spots to make it quite readable.

I’d be grateful if anybody could help me with this, either in publishing or directing me to some zines or small press magazines that could. R.D. is in poor health---I don’t even know if he’s even alive as I write this---so I’d like to try to get it through as soon as possible. I’m doing this because I think his stories deserve to be seen and “just to be nice”.

Feel free to forward or cross post this message.

Many thanks. James N. Dawson jamesndawson@yahoo.com